Free Finding Davey by Jonathan Gash Page A

strite Kylee
    Kylee, offering him a computer? It sounded decidedly rum. What if it was stolen?
    Strite for straight, and m8 for mate, presumably? How to explain to Geoff why he was buying a computer from a loutish teenager? And what of her father?
    He wondered whether to talk it over with Geoff, but his son would be horrified and want to know what Bray planned, thinking his father had lost his marbles.
    No. He had to do it alone, get help from anywhere, anyhow.

    Officer Jim Stazio talked most with Sam Tietze. His partner was still doing some crazy night school law and criminology, the course not worth a belch. And would never finish it, Jim knew. He suspected Sam had something going with the woman who ran the gas station over Benksayne. Sam argued strong points, pardons, kind of stuff Jim thought a waste of a good evening.
    Nobody should get pardon.
    “See, Sam,” he told him. “That crazo Menzoy had a partner. We never got the two, right?”
    “Aldo, he talks, he gets his throat cut in Ablutions, Jim. He fed you a load of shit and shine.”
    “I didn’t ask what he done, Sam. I asked about others.”
    They’d made an arrest that morning, a lowlife receiving stolen goods looted after crowd disturbances, what Sam called a shout bout, women shrieking yelled about fascist hogs, what gave you bile hours later. They were in a diner on Coltra, five roads met there, giving town loafers a pile-up every time some drunk overshot the lights, be right there on the spot when the next happened.
    “Jim,” Sam sighed. “We know about others. It’s them we ain’t got.”
    “I milked him, Sam. Three names I got, two buyers and one mebbe.”
    “Buyers?” Sam Tietze talked cagey, looking like lock and load, not really believing a word. “You got names of kid buyers?”
    Jim said, “I should be so lucky. People he says adoptions gone wrong, past felonies stopping foster-parenting, Christ knows what.”
    “How’d he know them?”
    “Didn’t say. Been knifed once, didn’t want no more.”
    Sam chuckled. “Not all bad news, right?”
    “I’m going to call them. Want to come?”
    “Jim, we done that shit. How long you got before your bus pass?”
    Jim thumped his feet down and waved to the counter girl. They changed every week, Aquilina the Maltese paying them half the legal hourly.
    “I’ll give it a miss, Jim. No hard feelings?”
    “Just don’t call me as alibi for that night school you pretending.”
    Sam beckoned more coffee and shook his head, like hadn’t an officer anything better to do with his time.

    The house was as elegant as anything the burbs had to offer. Jim Stazio left his marked police car in the long drive, visible from the road as intimidation, what will the neighbours think? He regained his breath before ringing the doorbell. His water supplement wasn’t taking effect yet, dieting four days and still thirty pounds overweight.
    A small neat woman in her fifties admitted him. Her husband was somewhere in transit, Hawaii to San Fran, home tomorrow. He said he was making enquiries.
    “A few crosses on paper,” he told Mrs Baines. “Nothing important.”
    Sam Tietze had a smoother line, which was why Jim had wanted him along. Sam had a habit of smiling at windows, sofas and maybe carpets like he knew them, hey, I got one in my apartment, that way. Homely, Jim would say if asked, Sam could look homely, things reassured a woman. Sam was a natural, Jim wasn’t.
    “It’s about that adoption business again,” Jim said. “That old thing. I’m retiring soon. Loose ends, Mrs Baines.”
    Her hand went to her throat. “Loose ends?”
    “Nothing serious.” She seemed a mite paler. “Can you just go over how you went about it again? Then I can tick the box and that’ll be it.”
    Haltingly, she said how she and her husband had tried for adoption. “All kinds of agencies, Officer Stazio,” she said earnestly. “You’ve simply no idea.” She coloured. “There’s a cut-off. My husband calls it